Is it possible to create something from nothing? This is the question that lies at the center of one of humanity’s oldest and greatest mysteries: the origins of life on Earth. Given that the universe itself was created 13 billion years ago from a state of apparent nothingness, could life, too, have emerged in a similar act of self-creation?

For millennia, scientists and philosophers have proposed several theories. Some thinkers like the Greek philosopher Anaximander believed that life began in the ocean and that all living things were descendants of sea creatures, while others like Aristotle proposed “spontaneous generation” — the idea that life could form from simpler substances like mud, hay, or clay. However, it wasn’t until 1952 when scientists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey, of the now famous Miller-Urey Experiment, provided the first definitive answer to this question by replicating the conditions of early Earth’s oceans and atmospheres in their laboratory. In doing so, they demonstrated how inorganic molecules present at the time could combine spontaneously to produce the organic molecules that are the building blocks of life.

“Is it possible to create something from nothing?”

Despite this groundbreaking experiment, Miller and Urey’s work also raised several other questions. The most pressing, perhaps, was how the simple organic molecules they saw in their experiment could later assemble into the complex molecules needed to sustain even the simplest of life forms. Modern researchers now believe that the key to solving this mystery hinges on an understanding of the origins of protein synthesis rather than the broader origins of life. Given that proteins are considered to be the “workhorses” of life due to the extensive range of functions they perform, it’s hardly a surprise that scientists at the University College London were particularly excited when they made a breakthrough in understanding how these molecules may have been formed on early Earth. Their answer? A simple, yet highly reactive sulfur compound known as thioester.

Led by Matthew Powner, the team built off the work of Christian de Duve, a biochemist who was the first to propose the “Thioester World” hypothesis. According to de Duve, there was a period of time on early Earth when thioesters provided the energy that was needed for organic elements to react and form more complex molecules.  This compound is particularly prominent in the synthesis and breakdown of fatty acids. In the case of proteins, however, thioesters were the valuable catalysts that facilitated their formation through the linkage of amino acids and RNA. While de Duve’s theory was supported by strong, indirect evidence, Powner and his team would be the first to provide direct empirical proof for it. To do so, they had to first replicate the conditions of early Earth and then prove that thioesters could be synthesized through the organic molecules that existed during that time period. They then had to react the synthesized thioesters with amino acids so that, at last, de Duve’s Thioester World hypothesis was validated.

The work done was complex, but with a great deal of prior experience in origin-of-life experiments, Powner and his team achieved something that scientists have been trying to accomplish since de Duve first proposed his theory in 1991. They hope to build off their work, with their next goal being to examine how RNA sequences can code instructions for protein synthesis. For now, though, perhaps this is the answer to the question that started it all — it’s not that something arose from nothing, but rather, with the right spark, nothing can stay nothing for too long.